Twilight & the Plight of the Female Fan

When Noah first asked me if I’d like to write a guest post for The Hooded Utilitarian, he mentioned that he’d be especially interested in something about Twilight. I admit I originally balked at the idea. Though I’ve vocally defended the series’ fans, I haven’t read the novels, and my only significant reaction to the first volume of Yen Press’ graphic novel adaptation was that it was more readable than I expected.

That last statement should not be taken as a condemnation of Twilight by any means. The truth is, I’m simply not its audience. I like a good romance as much as the next middle-aged married lady, but even those who dismiss the genre would be foolish to assume that all romances are created equal. Simply put, I’m too old for Twilight. While my teenaged self might not have fully comprehended Stephanie Meyer’s bloodlust = regular ol’ lust metaphor (not that it’s especially subtle), she would have felt it in a profound way. It would have resonated with her on a deeply personal level. I was pretty innocent as a teen, and the concept of even kissing a boy was both enticing and mind-blowingly terrifying, much like Bella’s first kiss with her sparkly, bloodthirsty suitor, deep in the secluded woods.

Now in my forties, I know all too well that sex is the least terrifying element of romance. Love’s true horrors prey on the heart and mind, and there’s nothing you can buy at Walgreens to help protect them. Looking in at Twilight from the reality of weary adulthood, it’s difficult to muster patience for Edward’s martyred bad-boy act (just as it’s difficult to stomach Bella’s fascination with it) but I can recognize it as something that, if it was written for me at all, was written for the me of a very different time and place.

A second read-through of the graphic novel has only cemented my original opinion of it, but even so, I feel a kind of kinship to the series’ young fans. Having spent my entire life obsessed with some kind of fiction or another–books, television, musicals, manga–I can appreciate their need to experience the series over and over again, to talk about it with friends, and to proselytize everyone they meet. Sure, it’s obnoxious, but how many long-time genre fans can honestly claim that’s never been them? I know I can’t.

Earlier this year, just before the first volume of the Twilight graphic novel was released, I made a post in my blog about the manga and anime fandom’s treatment of Twilight fans. In that post, I cited a few overtly misogynistic comments made by male fans, and proposed a theory that the real “problem” with Twilight fans in the eyes of fandom is that they are overwhelmingly girls. That’s a pretty easy accusation to make against nearly any genre fandom. We’ve all heard stories of women who’ve been ogled, condescended to, or otherwise mistreated in comic book shops, at conventions, in online forums and so on, and most of us have experienced this at some point or another ourselves.

What I think I missed back when I wrote that post, however, is something far sadder than a bunch of paranoid fanboys making an angry fuss on the internet. What’s more disturbing to me now–something I began to see bubbling up in comments and responses to that post–is a trend of women in manga and comics fandoms deliberately distancing themselves from other women (or from works created by/for women in the medium, teen romances or otherwise) as an apparent matter of pride. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that women have an obligation to like works created by other women, or even the women themselves. We like what we like, and there’s not a lot more to be said about that.

The thing is, we are saying more. We’re ranting and denying and over-explaining ourselves, all in an attempt to ensure that we can’t be associated with anything “girly.” Take, for instance, this recent post from Molly McIsaac at iFanboy.com, “Turning Japanese: A Starter Guide to (Shoujo) Manga” (and let me apologize to her now for choosing her as my example). In this post, Ms. McIsaac strives to cut through all the girly stuff and point readers to some shoujo manga with “good, solid stories and strong characters.”

We’ll gloss over the fact that she likens shoujo manga to Craig Thompson’s Blankets (which, as a story of one man’s coming to terms with his spirituality, most closely resembles a particular brand of seinen, if anything at all), and that none of her shoujo “staples” goes back any further than 1996. All any of this indicates is that she’s fairly new to the medium and has yet to really experience its breadth (and hell, some of that older shoujo is pretty hard to find in print). None of this has anything to do with my problem.

What I’m getting around to here is the fact that Ms. McIsaac seems to feel that she has to offer up disclaimers for reading shoujo manga at all. I’m also bothered by the strong implication that manga for girls is antithetic to solid stories and strong characters. “However, do not allow shoujo manga to intimidate you,” she says. “Although it is aimed primarily at young women, there are plenty of good, solid stories that are considered shoujo that I believe most people can enjoy.” If even women feel they need to make these kinds of excuses while recommending manga written for (and primarily by) women and girls, how can we expect any of that work or the fans who read it to be respected by the larger fandom?

Again, I’d like to apologize to Molly McIsaac. This attitude about girls’ comics has most likely been passed down to her by scores of female fans who came before, shuttling around borrowed volumes of Boys Over Flowers to each other with quiet embarrassment, wishing they looked just a little less sweet and sparkly.

Honestly, I’ve done this myself. How many times have I complained about the hot pink Shojo Beat branding on the outside of Viz’s editions of NANA, claiming that it trivializes the series and makes it embarrassing to read on the plane? (The answer is, “Many, many times.”) Yet I can think of several pink, sparkly, decidedly “girly” manga (at least one of which is written for little girls) that are more well-constructed, deftly plotted, and philosophically-minded than many of the comics I’ve seen published for, say, boys or adult males. Though these manga are certainly girly, they’re hardly lightweight. Even so, just two years ago, I sat in on a convention panel at a nearby women’s college, where one of the pro panelists (a female sci-fi writer) told the entire room full of young women that all shoujo manga was plotless high school romance and that whenever she saw girls looking in the manga section at her local comic shop, she’d direct them towards “more interesting things like Bone.”

What does any of this have to do with Twilight? Well, nothing and everything, I suppose. If female manga and comics fans have any hope of adjusting men’s attitudes about our presence in “their” fandom, we really need to start by adjusting our own. I’m probably never going to really like Twilight (in graphic novel form or otherwise)… or Black Bird, or Make Love and Peace, or any number of particular girls’ and women’s comics I’ve picked up and discarded for various reasons.

I’m also never going to like Mao Chan, KimiKiss, Toriko, the Color trilogy, or any number of other comics I’ve rejected that were written for boys or men. Yet the existence of these boys’ and men’s series I don’t like has never made me feel like I have to apologize for or explain why I still read things like Fullmetal Alchemist, Children of the Sea, or Black Jack. “Well, it’s written for guys, but it’s still good, I swear!” That’s a sentiment I have yet to see expressed by comics fans on the internet, female or otherwise.

So what is it about “girly” comics that puts us so on the defensive? Are we seeking approval from male fans? Do we believe we have to publicly reject all things stereotypically feminine in order to obtain (or maintain) credibility in fandom? If so, I submit that we’re actually playing right into the attitudes that kept us alienated in the first place. And if we’re doing it to establish credibility amongst ourselves, we’ve lost to them completely.

– Read Melinda’s reviews and discussion of manga, manhwa, and other East Asian-influenced comics at her blog, Manga Bookshelf.

60 Comments

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To a certain extent, I see this exact same thing in the business world. Almost all the male executives had a protege, someone they groomed for future greatness. With the exception of two women, in all my years of working, I have seen this almost not at all among women. These two women reached out to cultivate and nurture young women to take on executive roles, but they were anomalies in every company. Most women execs just kept their head down and worked (and were quite often the first to throw young women under the bus.)

For my part, I’m *still* receiving emails and comments that imply that I, as a woman, have no right at all to enjoy lesbian entertainment, since everyone knows it’s for men. Obviously, it doesn’t affect me in any meaningful way.

Rather than commenting bitterly on the situation, I challenge every woman who reads this to reach out to another woman, a girl, and foster and nurture her love of …whatever. The only way to fix this is to actually fix it. :-)

Melinda,
As always, great thoughts. I agree no one should have to apologize for the fiction they like. We are who we are and if other people don’t understand why we like certain comic books, that’s their loss, not ours.

My question would be, do you see that many female manga fans making apologies for what they like? I don’t, but then I’m not paying attention to those kind of things. I can’t think of anyone making apologies for liking Fruits Baskets, Vampire Knight, or any yaoi title. I wonder if the phenomena of female readers being uncomfortable with reading girly comics existing more in fans over 30. Women who grew up in a world prior to manga being in every chain bookstore in the country.

It seems to me that the female manga fan base has been very unapologetic in their love of all things girly. In my ten years of anime convention experience, I never seen a female manga fan be ashamed to buy and boast about the most effeminate books. Now anime conventions are at minimum 50% female attendees, so it’s a much different dynamic than at comic book conventions. Also, it’s estimated that 60% of all manga readers are female, so within the manga/anime community they don’t feel the need to justify their reading habits with so many other women in the room.

Are these observations in line with your experiences at anime conventions and among female manga fans?

For the record, I love St. Dragon Girl, Paradise Kiss, Tail of the Moon, Kare Kano, and Nana. There’s no shame in my shojo-loving game.

I read mostly shojo myself. I’m not ashamed of it, though I do realize the immaturity of some titles (clearly written with teenage girls in mind).
Fruits Basket and Skip Beat are still two of my favorite titles, and always will be.
But God bless Fumi Yoshinaga for writing more mature stories.

It’s interesting that you mention the cover presentation. Shojo manga covers are decidedly…girly. It’s often obvious what’s going to be inside. Take a look at any Vampire Knight cover. I got picked on a bit (in a good humored way) for reading Absolute Boyfriend by my manager when I worked at a comic book store. There’s a naked guy on the cover of one of the volumes, only covered up by some tissue paper or something. So he would make little jokes about my “manga porn.” We got along well, so I wasn’t offended, but I can’t imagine what the random passer by would think seeing me read that in a public area.

I don’t know, Michelle – it’s pretty standard that big boys and girls want something different to read than little boys and girls. It’s not bizarre that 20-somethings want stories that show people in their age group or life status. We graduate college…it seems totally sensible to think some readers graduate from shoujo to josei.

To some extent…but on the other hand, would you say something like, “people graduate from reading Alice in Wonderland”? I guess you might, but it would be a little odd, at least. You can still like children’s books when you get older…and, you know, I didn’t start reading Twilight till I was in my late 30s. I guess the point is “graduation” sounds like you’ve moved up or on to something better or achieved something — whereas the fact is that Alice in Wonderland is better than 99.9% of all literature for adults, and Twilight is better than quite a lot of literature for adults (John Grisham, Tom Clancy…the list goes on.) Demographics are demographics, but they don’t necessarily have any relationship to quality…..

““Well, it’s written for guys, but it’s still good, I swear!” That’s a sentiment I have yet to see expressed by comics fans on the internet, female or otherwise.”

I think that this does happen, at least in the guise of “it’s got T&A / panty shots / endless shounen fighting sequences, but it’s still good, I swear!” I know I’ve pitched Fujoshi Rumi (which is BL-fangirl-friendly but officially seinen, and has the fanservice to prove it) in these terms, and I’ve seen the same idea applied to any number of superheroine-in-improbable-costume books.

That said, there’s definitely a prejudice that things that are overtly girly are forgettable fluff at best and contemptible dreck at worst. Ed is probably right that the younger, more manga-focused fans are less likely to feel this way, but women coming from more guy-oriented backgrounds (like Western comics) do tend to either repudiate the pink sparkly stuff, or to apologize or self-depreciate if they do admit to liking it.

Erica,
I can’t agree with that, either. Certainly as people grow up they seek out more mature things to read (or watch or whatever), but that doesn’t mean they move away from/graduate from/forget about the other stuff.
I know 60-70 year old women who are Twilight fans. And those books are most certainly written for teenage girls.

Erica, I never graduated from my easy-reader books and recently reviewed them here in fact.

Melinda,
I admit I kind of like the pink! As for Twilight, I’ve seen it called Twatlight and in every instance, it’s been a woman calling it that. It makes blood spurt from my eyeballs, obviously, because gendered insult for the fail. I’ve read the first couple of books and liked parts and disliked parts (Volvos are SO NOT SEXY), but if I had been sixteen I would heart it like a hearting thing and I’m sort of pouty that I don’t get to.

Not to pile on further to poor Erica…but I think she raises an interesting point in terms of nomenclature. That is, when Erica hears “graduate from shojo” she thinks, “graduate to josei.” For a lot of people unfamiliar with the manga scene though (or even passing familiar like me) josei doesn’t really exist as a separate concept; if it’s for girls its shojo, at whatever age. (Or at least, that’s my sense; I could be wrong….)

Everybody may know this already but…the femininity debate is at the center of second wave/third wave feminism debates. That is, second wave folks (to generalize wildly) tended to be down on the feminine; they saw frills and pink and bows and childishness as part of the patriarchy’s effort to infantilize and denigrate women. Third wave has been (in general) more interested in reclaiming some of that — seeing the denigration of girly as a way that the patriarchy denigrates women.

Not that anyone is necessarily clamoring for my opinion or anything, but I tend to have some sympathy for both positions, sort of depending on the exact issue in question. Obviously, celebrating the feminine joys of housework has some downsides for the people who actually have to do the housework. And there can be problems with romance just as with boy’s adventure stuff; just because it’s for girls doesn’t mean it’s not sexist. On the other hand — if you’re going to criticize masculinity, it’s helpful to not have already put femininity beyond the pale…and of course there are lots of good feminine artwork for women, from Jane Austen to Nana.

Probably more verbiage than anyone wanted to hear, but there it is. A really good book about feminism and femininity is Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl.

Noah’s point about 2nd and 3rd wave is the historical context for something that’s just very intuitive to me, maybe because I’m older than 3rd wave or maybe just by accident: I’ve never been a particular fan of “things for girls,” even when I was a girl — I read romance novels but I also read adventure novels, and I hated fantasy (and superheros) and really generally prefered big mouthfuls of adult fiction (I read Gone with the Wind at 9 and Kon Tiki at 10 and Ian Fleming at 11, so perhaps too adult…). I grew up in a time and place where short brunette girls with glasses were just generally unpopular and blonde girls in frills and pink were the feminine ideal, not just for girls but also for boys. I wanted brown and blue sheets: I got hot pink. I wanted to wear baggy shirts and fedoras and men’s ties (it was 1985): I got light pink skirts and tees with flowers on them, because my mother was insistent that I’d never get married if I dressed like a boy. I passionately resented being told that the things I liked weren’t “girly.” I was a girl and I liked them and that made them girly enough for me, damn it.

I can only imagine how difficult this could be for someone who is legitimately transgendered (I’m not: I’m straight and quite gendered female by any standards but the most stereotypical ones) but I still have trouble with this; it feels like such a big contradiction to me, so I end up feeling much closer to the second wave stance. I have no desire to make anybody apologize for liking what they like, but I also tend to find things that are gendered “feminine” in this sense to be a very poor fit…I’m 100% behind supporting women and women’s choices, but do you have thoughts on how to finesse supporting the women who legitimately like the conventional notions while still encouraging “nonconformist” gender expression?

@Ed Yes, I have seen quite a bit of it, though not at conventions and other live-in-person venues. I’ve seen many other examples like the post I mentioned in my article, but more than that, I see it turn up in long comments to posts or shorter, more offhand ways, often in the form of self-depricating jokes. I’m glad you read your shojo without shame. I suspect in some ways it is easier for you than it is for a lot of women to do so.

@Michelle, I don’t know if I remember the original statement, but I’ve seen it passed around a lot since. I think (as has been discussed a lot already) it is the choice of words that makes it feel condescending.

@JRBrown, ha! Point taken. Though what feels different about that to me, is that for whatever reason, opinions about fanservice don’t seem to cast a net of shame around an entire demographic the way attitudes about shojo do. Certain genres might be affected, but not everything written for males in general.
@Vom I am totally with you on Volvos.

@Caro To tell you the truth, I’m probably a lot like you, though I have found that my tastes have shifted a bit more to traditionally girly things as I’ve gotten older, oddly. For instance, I actually bought a pink cell phone case. On purpose. I would have done myself in before agreeing to carry around something like that 10 years ago. In terms of your question, though… I’m not sure I have any great advice about finesse, but I think even just passing on vocal condemnation would be a big step for a lot of women.

Caro, I don’t know how useful this is, but…one of the things I most like about those Marston/Peter Wonder Woman comics is the way that they are both really girly and really butch. Marston loves frilly butterfly wings, and he loves having women play sports and beat the tar out of men. Basically, anything women do is coded by him as feminine, whether it’s traditionally girly or not, and he loves it all. *And* he also is really into feminizing his men. It’s one of the very rare cultural products where femininity is (a) positive for women, (b) not necessary for women to be feminine, (c) positive for men.

So…have more stories written by quasi-evangelical dirty old men with a fetishistic interest in feminism? Somehow that doesn’t seem like quite the answer you’re looking for….

As a guy who loves Shjo I cant relate to why certen women would feel the need to apolgize for likeing “girlly” Manga. If anything in the few discusions I have had online women havent been apolgizeing for likeing Shjo manga so much as attacking it. It’s useally (But not always) some complante about how “spineless” the female leads in Shojo manga are.

Or how the genre in and of it’s self is “degradeing” to women for not haveing “strong” female leads. Wich are valid criticisms of some titles but not the entire genre.

“How many times have I complained about the hot pink Shojo Beat branding on the outside of Viz’s editions of NANA, claiming that it trivializes the series and makes it embarrassing to read on the plane? (The answer is, “Many, many times.”)”

Are you comfortable reading Spider-man or Naruto on the plane?

I realize we live in an age where Harry Potter has somehow become adult material, but I’m curious if you think there’s no stigma in an adult reading boy’s or children entertainment in general? Is this a problem specific to literature aimed at girls?

@pallas I don’t read Spider-man or Naruto. But I can say that I’ve read Fullmetal Alchemist and Hikaru no Go on the plane many times without feeling any embarrassment at all.

I don’t think that this is really the argument I’m making, however. I’m specifically speaking to women about how we view things that we label “girly” and why. It’s not actually about children’s literature at all. NANA, however it is marketed here, is about women in their twenties. This is much less about how others see us than it is about how we see ourselves.

Returning late to see if anyone replied to my “graduate from shojo” comment to find quite a lot of discussion! And yes, it was the word “graduate” that most bothered me.

Besides the fact that I still adore a lot of children’s fiction—there’s a great quote from C. S. Lewis in which he says, and I paraphrase, “a book truly worth reading at the age of ten is also worth reading at 50″—it also bugged me that this guy didn’t seem to realize that there are mature stories available under the shojo (and not only the josei) heading.

If it makes you feel any better, imagine trying to be a male fan in the 90s admitting you liked anime in general. They thought you were disturbed. Hell, I had to deal with a lecture from my guidance counselor about Pokemon being crap because of that epileptic episode, when it ended up making more money here than he ever could. Anyway, while it’s true there’s a double standard, Twilight’s primarily getting backlash because it takes itself way too effing seriously, when it’s a poor woman’s Anne Rice fan-fic. But yeah, those SB cover were pretty embarassing, even moreso if you were a male reader buying the series. They might’ve worked out if this was the 80s, but they look cheap now. Ironically, I have to say that Twilight is actually a successful example of how to market this stuff to a wider audience. They sold it as something trendy, like Hot Topic, rather than niche, like the Scott Pilgrim movie. Same thing with Hannah Montana vs. say, Kodocha. They promoted that show as “fun for the whole family” vs. Hit Girl in Kick-Ass.

It is actually ironic that these types of brands are so successful, given how Hollywood initially under-valued young teen girls, outside of shitty boy bands, and shojo manga and anime were the first to demonstrate they could be a market force in their own right. And now, shojo has an uphill struggle, because it comes off like something only geeky girls would like.

I haven’t read Anne Rice. There’s no doubt that part of the appeal of Twilight is that it reads like fan-fic in part (there’s even an unreleased novel which retells the first book from Edward’s perspective.)

Overall, though (and like a certain amount of fan-fic) the books are successful because they’re really quite creative and weird. Her vampires manage to be more like fairies than vampires in a lot of ways — which is part of why lots of people hate the series so much. Lots of aspects of her vision are kind of perverse and weird, or just odd (vampire baseball!) They’re not great books, but they do have a unique take on urban fantasy. I don’t know — with Harry Potter when I look at its popularity I really do feel like, “why this?” Twilight is more like Superman — I can see why it’s been so successful.

[…] start with a piece that Melinda (Manga Bookshelf) Beasi wrote for The Hooded Utilitarian called “Twilight and the Plight of the Female Fan.” Here’s a key paragraph: “I’m also bothered by the strong implication that manga for girls is […]

[…] about shoujo manga not getting any respect. One of the triggers was Melinda Beasi’s piece on Twilight and the Plight of the Female Fan at The Hooded Utilitarian and the other was Christopher Mautner’s review of Moto […]

[…] by Erin Ptah Your one-stop shop for all the things Erin gets up to. « These Weeks, 8/23-9/5 In which I seem to have spontaneously morphed into a grouchy old fanhag, and briefly sing the praises of Vampire Game September 10, 2010 You know what meme I could stand to never see again? The idea that people hate on Twilight because the fans are “overwhelmingly girls”. […]

I appreciate the article very much. Much of the criticism of Twilight seem to boil down largely to “eew, cooties” — which makes the ill-informed embarrassment of women all the more difficult to take.

I think some readers of Twilight may misunderstand the series. Academically speaking, Twilight is a God-and-man allegory showing Bella — an unreliable narrator, with an unpolished narrative style — a “seeker,” who reaches divinization through commitment, love, and sacrifice. The key here though is that she, like many people, fails even to see her own self very clearly (as her Edward points out often) until the very, very end of Breaking Dawn. You will notice many references to lying in the series, suggesting that Bella is “lying,” or at least incorrect in how she sees things. The surprising thing, at least to me, is that so many people believe her wholeheartedly.

These are the same themes of much of the greatest literature our civilization has produced. That Bella comes off as more “ordinary” than most heroes is the basis of its appeal. The fact that Twilight fans find resonance in her struggling to become something more suggests that they, too, can and will become better, purer, more powerful, and more divine. Twihards have nothing to be ashamed of, but rather, they should be proud of their hero’s struggle, and of their own.

There is more to Twilight than meets the eye. Which is Meyer’s main point — for Bella, for the series, and for each of her careful readers who she rewards in remarkably profound ways.

Hey James. I’m actually a fan of the Twilight series…read all the books, seen all the movies, happy to defend its merits. However, I think you’re out on a limb when you argue that it’s using sophisticated unreliable narrative tropes. And I think that Bella does not actually come across as ordinary; a big part of her appeal is her specialness in a lot of ways.

The books have a lot to recommend them, but comparing them to the greatest literature our civilization has produced doesn’t necessarily do them any favors, IMO.

@James, I am happy to have your appreciation, but I must confess that you’re actually shining light on the one aspect of Twilight fandom (and indeed the books themselves) that genuinely makes me uncomfortable. I haven’t read the novels, as I mentioned, but from what I’ve heard from friends who have indicates that Stephanie Meyer was perhaps indeed attempting to tell the story you describe. Truthfully, however, I am uncomfortable with the concept of divinity, and even more so with the idea that it is something humans can or should try to achieve. If anything, it is the series’ religious overtones that have convinced me to keep it at arm’s length. That’s not something I would have discussed in an article like this, because I don’t think it’s actually on the radar for most of the series’ fans, but it is certainly a concern for me.

Aha! That’s what he was saying. I think there’s something to the idea that the series is about transcending the human — but I think that makes it less like great literature than like superhero comics and other pieces of pop ephemera. Human beings becoming supergod figures is a really popular idea, and I don’t see why girls shouldn’t be able to imagine it same as boys. But, as Melinda says, it’s neither an especially sophisticated idea nor a good one, overall….

Have you read Orson Scott Card? He’s a good bit more aggressive about incorporating Mormon theology into his pulp than Meyer is. I’m not super up on Mormon thought or anything, but from the little I know, Meyer doesn’t really push it especially hard. The religiosity that’s in there is fairly nondenominational Christian — talk about souls and hell and what not (and of course the obsession with family, I guess.) The vampires really read way more like superheroes to me than they do like specifically Mormon elevated souls or some such.

Not that it isn’t Mormon and consciously so, but I don’t think it’s exactly doing what you’re claiming. It’s really not evangelicalizing, as far as I could tell.

I have read very little Orson Scott Card, for a reason. Heh. Though not because of Mormonism, specifically. I avoid all religion equally. :-) You’ll note that even the example I used for comparison is not Mormon. I just picked it because it’s the one most commonly left at my doorstep.

There have been some specific elements of Twilight that have been pointed out to me as unique to Mormon doctrine, but I’m only going on hearsay, obviously, since I haven’t read the novels, nor am I Mormon, so I won’t insist. And either way, as I said, I think that’s not on the radar for most of the series’ fans, so even if she was deliberately proselytizing, I doubt it’s got much traction. After all, I ate up the entire Narnia series as a kid and never had a clue, and that really couldn’t be more blatant.

I read a lot of C.S. Lewis as a kid (including some novels for adults, like Out of the Silent Planet and so on) because my mother was a fan, but I haven’t revisited them as an adult. I’ve been leery of doing so due (for reasons that are probably obvious now), but perhaps I should at some point.

I’m not competent to comment on ‘Twilight’. Why not? Because I tried to read the first novel, and I was repulsed after a dozen or so pages by some of the worst, most basically incompetent prose I have ever had the misfortune to have read.

Sorry, Melinda, but ‘Twilight’ readers deserve every bushel of condescension they reap.

Mind you, I haven’t read the graphic novel adaptation or seen the movies, both of which may be (for aught I know) excellent entertainment.

As for the stigma attached to reading “girly-girl” manga: welcome to the club; I still read superhero comics at the age of 56. Many amused and self-approvingly tolerant smiles ensue.

But– so what?

Why do women care so much, compared to men, about social approval and validation in our culture?

My attitude is– if you don’t approve of my tastes, screw you twice with a whiskbroom.

Thanks for your responses. Melinda, I don’t think Meyer is being directly religious persay, but is instead relying upon the myth itself for metaphorical impact.

Like reading Narnia or Watchmen, where this meta-theme is more direct, the over-arching question for any reader engaging with a hero is, “Can I better myself so that I ‘overcome the world’ and have a safer/happier/more satisfying life?” For some readers that is a religious question as well, for others it isn’t, but all readers see that the hero can and does overcome, and the readers are encouraged/informed/empowered to overcome the world for themselves, out here in Real.

I don’t know if its okay to mention my own blog in a comment or not, but FWIW, I have a couple podcasts on TwilightNewsSite.com that consider these issues in depth. The first podcast is a conversation between myself and perhaps the world’s leading Tolkien scholar and the leading Rowling scholar. Quite a conversation.

“Why do women care so much, compared to men, about social approval and validation in our culture?”

They’re socialized differently? They experience sexism throughout their lives and are condescended to more or less compulsively? Then when they point out that this is a problem, they get folks like you rearing up to denounce them condescendingly?

In any case, I can say that, based on my own experience, when you sneer at men’s taste, they are every bit as likely as women (and perhaps more so) to freak the fuck out. (I’ve even see you do that on an occasion or two! And I quite possibly have as well at some point….)

Twilight’s prose is better than the vast majority of that in super-hero comics. It’s a low bar, sure, but Meyer clears it.

James, I don’t agree that it’s useful to explain all hero stories in that way. I’m really skeptical that it applies to Twilight, which is in any case as much a romance as a hero story…. But, in anyc ase, thank you for those links!

The amount of comments here makes another post seem like an overkill, but I realized that nobody touched on the point that personally bother me about shojo. I do read a lot of it and enjoy it. I also read a lot of other things manga or not. Shojo is however, indeed, the one genre which sometimes make me cringe about being labelled as a shojo fan. My reason for it lies in the emotional construct of a lot of shojo stories – ie a girl finds herself involved with one (or more commonly 2+) too-good to be true or too-bad to bother but handsome boys who are all interested in her for some obscure reason. This is the standard girl fantasy that every girl has when she starts to get interested in romantic relationships. All the fairy tales we read as kids point to the prince charming. And as an adult female, this bothers me to no end. If only for the terribly overlooked fact that people rarely get interested in somebody else who doesn’t have at least some quality other than waiting for prince charming to fill their life. And even if that were to happen, they wouldn’t stay interested for long if their love interest only wanted to “be happy together forever”. What I find striking in a lot of shojo stories is the heroine’s lack of any other interest than the boy of her dreams. What about her own personality? Dreams? Personal goals? Because let’s face it, nobody would be interested by a person who doesn’t have any of those. And yet, this is what I keep finding in a lot of shojo. I think historically there are many reasons for why the Sleeping Beauty spent the whole tale sleeping until the Prince Charming did something to change that, but it definitely does not apply to our society today and girls who don’t get it are heading for a lot of disappointment and heartbreak. Also, why do all those old stories end with “and then they lived happily ever after”? Maybe because when your characters don’t have any independent dreams and aspirations, there is not much to say about their future? So yes, I do read shojo, shonen and everything else. I like good plots with believeable characters. And yes, somehow bad shonen adventure, or a bad mystery don’t make me feel like there is a terribly empty and wrong message in them that might shape the behavior of half of the population.Bad flat shojo does.

Hey Tacto. Those all sound like reasonable objections — and one’s which apply to Twilight in some ways, at least arguably. Never fear, though — the gendered content of superhero comics are equally bad, if not worse. A lot of the shonen I’ve seen is pretty bad too, though — it’s possible certain things just push your buttons for whatever reason?

Not sure this is helpful, but if you like fantasy romance adventure with strong female characters, you might try Patricia Wrede’s Enchanted Forest series. It’s very good, and directly addresses a lot of the things you say you don’t like in those types of adventures (the lead character Princess is driven crazy by all of her friends who don’t do anything but wait around for their princes to come…that sort of thing.)

Tacto, I appreciate your comment, but I have to say I’m actually pretty tired of the argument you make. Is there a particular brand of shojo that overuses these tropes? Sure. Do those tropes represent shojo manga as a whole? Not even close. I have shelves full of shojo, and very few of those series fall into what you’re describing. The few that do, do what they do *very* well.

There is bad fiction to be found in any genre (and shojo spans many, many genres). There’s also plenty of good stuff. So why do we let everyone define shojo by only its worst titles?

Here, I’ll make it a little easier. Here’s a list just from a quick scan of my shelves, of shojo and youth-oriented josei (some of which is actually marketed as josei here, and some of which is marketed as shojo–all fall into the range of what I’m talking about in this post). My collection is minuscule compared to a lot of people’s, but I think this is actually a pretty good representation of the diversity to be found in manga written for girls and young women that has been published in English. Some of it is super-“girly”. Some is not. All of it is stuff I like a lot.

Noah, thank you for the advice on “Enchanted Forest”, I’ll check it out.
Melinda, I understand your exasperation with people labeling a whole genre by its worse part. I do, since I am a manga fan and that does include shojo. What I notice is just that bad shojo (and yes, bad josei) do bother me more than bad shonen/seinen. Maybe that has to do with the fact that I am a woman and am more sensitive to the stereotypes we feed to teen girls. I like your idea of looking at your shelves though and if anything it made me realize that maybe I have been unwillingly neglecting shojo as I did not read many of the titles you have.
So let me look at mine:
Paradise Kiss, Nana, Gokinjo Monogotari (french)
A,A’, Four shojo stories
Love Song
Skip Beat
Please save my Earth
Kare Kano
Nodame Cantabile
Kodocha, a child’s story
Red River
Rumik Theater
Nightschool
I also own things like Vampire Knight and Bride of the Water God which I consider my own personal eye junk food – the art is enough to make me want to keep them and close my eyes on the story (or the lack of thereof).
There is also the Afterschool Nightmare which has one of the best plots I found in shojo but who’s heroine made me want to hit her through the entire story.
And then ,of course, there is the rest, which for obvious reasons, I don’t keep on my shelves:
Hot Gimmick, Absolute Boyfriend, and I will put Fushigi Yugi (and to a lesser degree, Marmelade Boy) in there as well (I did own the entire series before giving it away, I read it as a teen, agonizing between the very pleasurable and familiar teen’s angst and the aversion at the wrongness of the whole thing which left me unsatisfied in the end). And there are more that I can’t remember for reading through the first chapter and closing the book to never think of it again, so the list of pros and cons is somewhat biased.
To return to our original point, I guess I can only say this: it takes years to built a reputation and only a day to ruin it – in a way, even a few really bad titles can negatively affect a whole genre if they are bad enough (and are mostly a variation on one theme, which accentuates the negative impact). We can hope though that the ratio of interesting and varied shojo to the flat shojo will increase with time (as some creators and editors give it more thought) and that it will help getting it rid of the negative associations that it can have now.

What I noticed here in the comments and elsewhere is that people seem to be thinking of shoujo manga as a genre. That’s not right. “Shoujo” is just a marketing demographic, not a genre. Shoujo manga can be any genre, as illustrated by Melinda Beasi above. For example, Banana Fish is an action thriller while Basara is an epic fantasy. These two have absolutely nothing in common, the plots don’t share any of the same elements, the arts styles don’t remotely resemble each other, yet they’re still shoujo manga. I think a lot of people are hearing shoujo manga and thinking of teen romances like Hot Gimmick and such and thinking all shoujo is like that, thus the “genre” label. Well, let’s stop that. It’s misinformed.

Genre doesn’t mean everything in the genre is the same, or even much alike. It does mean that the works (generally) share certain tropes, marketing, and other aspects. I think it makes sense to think of shojo as a genre, especially as its used in its U.S. incarnation.

I’m with Jessica. Shojo isn’t a genre, it’s a marketing demographic. If there weren’t so many examples of already-established genres *within* the category (sci-fi, fantasy, thriller, romance–these are full-on genres of their own), I could go with you, Noah, but as it is, that doesn’t work for me.

Yes, and I don’t agree with regards to shoujo manga, else we’d be calling YA fiction, or childrens books, or e-books a “genre”. Like I said before, Basara and Banana Fish don’t share anything, so how can they belong to the same genre?

I am, apparently, very strange. I haven’t excused stories for “being good, even if they are girly”. Ever.

I tend to do the opposite. “It’s still good, even if a guy wrote it and added lots of thighs, really, people, don’t judge me, I’m not a loserfangirl but just a normal happy fangirl…”

I love my sappy girly romances (mostly in the shoujo section, and there almost entirely in the yuri section of shoujo, yay female aimed lesbian-themed stories written mostly by female authors), with pink and everything.

And I hate twilight. Not the fans, just the heteronormative, sexist story. I rather recommend something more positively girly over it, like, say, Sailor Moon or Fruits Basket. Tohru has pretty much the same goal like Bella, and yet has far more of her own mind, and better male love interests.

Twilight could be less gay friendly. The werewolves (portrayed very positively thorughout) are not-all-that-subtly analogized to gay men (epecially in the movies, but in the books as well). And I’m pretty sure in the last book that there’s a female vampire couple who aren’t called lesbians, but seem like they’re a nod in that direction. In any case, there’s a pretty strong message of tolerance of difference throughout.

I mean, it’s got a heterosexual romance as its focus, obviously. But I’d say that the way it ignores the issue of gay sexuality is not especially fraught or negative by pop culture standards.

[…] stories (except for the sex, obviously). And then I ran across this interesting post on shojo, Twilight and the Plight of the Female Fan, by manga critic Melinda Beasie. Shojo is manga written for young women—and I’m not […]

[…] This attitude towards femininity is perhaps best reflected in the tagline of Viz’s Four Shoujo Stories, in which They Were Eleven appeared alongside works by Keiko Nishi and Shio Sato. “It’s Not Just Girls’ Stuff Anymore” the cover proudly proclaims, assuring us in advance that its content is smarter and better than that (“It’s for girls, but it’s still good, I swear!”) […]